Music on the Hill Scholarship

Ian Lin is a 16-year-old American pianist, composer, and violinist from Wakefield, Rhode Island. He began piano at four, and trained formally from six to thirteen with Tanya Schwartzman. He continued his studies with Meng Chieh Liu and Natalie Zhu, and currently studies with Jonathan Bass at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Ian has played masterclasses for distinguished artists, including Richard Goode, Wei-Yi Yang, Fabio Bidini, and more. Ian has received many accolades in piano competitions, including first prizes from the International Chopin Competition (Hartford), Paderewski International Piano Competition (Farmington), Steinway Society of Massachusetts, and Crescendo Little Mozart competitions. He placed third at the International Young Artist Pianist Competition (Washington, D.C.) and the New England Piano Teachers’ Association Mildred Freiburg Competition, was Rhode Island’s MTNA state winner, and earned “Best Performer” at URI’s Piano Extravaganza. He was also the winner of the East Carolina Piano Festival competition, a winner of the Vancouver Piano Sessions concerto competition, and second place winner in the Philadelphia International Music Festival concerto competition. He has been featured as soloist with the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, Long Bay Symphony, and the Rhode Island Youth Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Most recently, he was named a YoungArts winner with distinction in Classical Music/Piano for 2026. Ian is also a recipient of a full scholarship from the Chopin Foundation of the United States, and was a quarterfinalist in the 2025 Fischoff competition. Ian has played multiple times in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall as well as Boston Symphony Hall. He also frequently performs for retirement communities. He was featured as the Young Artist for the Kingston Chamber Music Festival’s Young Artist Mini Recital in 2024 and has also been presented by Core Memory Music. As a composer, Ian won third place in the MTNA national composition competition and has also won the MTNA Eastern Division composition competition multiple times. He also received the New Tribeca Emerging Composer Award, and earned an honorable mention in ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer competition. Ian is currently a member of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and was previously concertmaster of the Rhode Island Youth Symphony Orchestra and also a member of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra. Ian became a Davidson Young Scholar at five, and now studies at Davidson Academy Online. Besides music, he enjoys tennis and chess.

Alejandro Quintero Cashore is an 18-year-old cellist from East Greenwich, Rhode Island. He is currently a member of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Youth Symphony Orchestra, and has earned principal cellist for the RIMEA (Rhode Island Music Educators Association) and All-State Orchestras in 2023, 2024, 2025, and for the 2026 festival. Highly passionate about community service and social justice, he’s spent over 100 hours volunteering and working at Community Music Works in Providence, Rhode Island, and has served as the president of Bishop Hendricken High School’s affinity group, The Brotherhood, since 2022, where he has organized school wide luncheons attended by 120+ peers of color and launched a Civil Rights Movement Student Immersion Trip, whose inaugural group of 12 students will travel to sites like the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 2026. Summer festivals attended include Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra (NYO2) in 2025, where he toured in Edinburgh, Scotland, and performed at Carnegie Hall, and the Sphinx Performance Academy at Berklee College of Music in Boston and CU Boulder School of Music in 2025 and 2024, respectively. Most recently, he was awarded Bishop Hendricken High School’s Leonard Bernstein Musicianship Award, the Daniel and Dorothy Harrop Scholarship for Excellence in Music, and a gold medal on the Level 4 National Spanish Exam for a score above the 95th percentile. Alejandro plans to double major in Cello Performance and Economics and was recently admitted to the University of Notre Dame through their Early Action program. He is currently awaiting admissions decisions from Northwestern and Yale University to come in March 2026.